Acute cardiac care & resuscitation
Wearable-based automated cardiac arrest detection and alerting: A systematic review
Authors' conclusion
Wearable devices have demonstrated promising sensitivity for detecting cardiac arrest. However, (external) validation and real-life data are scarce, and the sensitivity-false alarm trade-off requires further investigation.
Study context
- Population
- Studies describing non-invasive, intended wearable systems designed to detect out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) and reporting on their detection performancepublications included, from 6,344 records screened, number of participants ranging from 18 to 1,423
- Participants
- 13 participants
- Outcome
- Sensitivity for cardiac arrest detection
Methodological detailsbased on recommendations of the PRISMA statement and Cochrane Collaboration, studies evaluated using the QUADAS-2 tool
- Based on recommendations of the PRISMA statement and Cochrane Collaboration
- Studies evaluated using the QUADAS-2 tool
Pooled result
As reported in the abstract
- Sensitivity range
- between 43.8 and 100%
- Studies reporting a sensitivity of ≥ 90%
- ten
Further pooled results
Device type
- Wristbands (the most prevalent device type)
- n=9
Sensor type
- Studies using photoplethysmography as primary sensor type
- Nine
- Accelerometry as additive sensor modality
- n=2
- Mechanical plethysmography
- n=1
- Electrocardiography
- n=1
- Sound-based
- n=1
- Nonlinear resonant circuit
- n=1
False positives cardiac arrest alerts
- False positives range
- between multiple per day and one per twenty-one user-years
Original publication
Wearable-based automated cardiac arrest detection and alerting: A systematic review. Resuscitation. Published 2 November 2026. doi:10.
Composed by AI from the published abstract and checked against it. How Briefs are made →